Preventing toxoplasmosis

There are a number of measures you can take to help reduce your risk of developing a toxoplasmosis infection.

These measures are particularly important if you're pregnant or have a weakened immune system:

• wear gloves when gardening, particularly when handling soil wash your hands thoroughly afterwards with soap and hot water
• avoid eating raw or undercooked meat, particularly lamb and pork, including any ready mealsread more about how to prepare and cook food safely
• wash your hands before and after handling food
• wash all kitchenware thoroughly after preparing raw meat
• always wash fruit and vegetables before eating them, including pre-prepared salads
• avoid drinking unpasteurised goats' milk or eating products made from it
• avoid catpoo in cat litter or soil wear gloves when changing a cat's litter tray and wash your hands thoroughly afterwards; if you're pregnant or havea weak immune system, ask someone else to change it for you, ideally once a day
• give your cat dried or canned cat food rather than raw meat to ensure they don't eat any infected meat
• cover your child's sandpit if you have one to stop cats using it as a litter box

If you're pregnant, youshould also avoid coming into contact with sheep and newborn lambsduring the lambing seasonas there's a small riskan infected sheep orlamb could passthe infection onat this time.

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